Most books about
history are about
power. As you read
them, you can feel
the author being
drawn in by the
adrenaline rush, by
the unconscious association with the larger-than-life heroes and villains of yesterday.
But most history is not made by these figures.
It is made by humanity, by people living
out the mundanity of family life, earning
an income, seeking better circumstances for
their children. Just by trying to get on with
their lives, most people have to contend
with a world that the few—those with
power—make for them.

A whole series of injustices arise from
this power imbalance: a world where alcoholism
and cigarette addiction are driven by
the few to drive their corporate profits and
fuel their greed; a world where fear and xenophobic
nationalism are dressed up as patriotism,
to keep people acquiescent and the
powerful in power. Sometimes this power
imbalance arises from the amoral logic of
systems—markets that take no heed of the
collateral damage of unemployment; food
supply systems that are blind to malnutrition
and obesity; cultural traditions that
evolve into cruel hierarchies of class and
caste and the diminishment of one race,
gender, or caste to the point where it becomes
second nature to the oppressed and
abandoned to believe that their oppression and abandonment are the natural
order of things.

And against this abuse, the
common woman and man have
one superweapon: the power of
self-organized, self-supporting
groups who throughout history have had the courage to stand up
against the abuse of power.

Join the Club by journalist Tina
Rosenberg could have been written at just about any point in history. It could have been written after the Chartists in the
1830s or the Peasants’ Revolt in the 14th century,
after the ousting of Willem Kieft as director
general of the early Dutch settlement
of New Amsterdam or the 1912 Bread and
Roses strikes of women in the mills of Massachusetts,
or after the 1960s civil rights
movement in Northern Ireland. Writing
now, in the 21st century, Rosenberg reaffirms
that the power of people to organize and to
seek self-help remains a phenomenal force,
regardless of technological advances.

In Join the Club, Rosenberg shows how
peer support can change the lives of the individuals
involved, can change a whole
economy, can bring down dictators, and can
strike back against a thousand years of caste
oppression.

Her thesis is a simple one. People are
fundamentally social animals. In isolation a
person can never “be all that you can.”
When we are able to harness the power of
being part of a group, supporting and being
supported by those around us, we can
achieve extraordinary things. The message
is one of hope. This is refreshing, given that
most books on peer pressure focus on the
negative: on gang warfare and adolescent
drug use or the political blindness of gated
communities.

Join the Club is largely descriptive. Part of
chapter 2 delves into the science of why
people are societal animals, summarizing
new research in neurology and genetics.
Such science is fertile new ground for enabling
readers to better understand the evolutionary
advantages of peer support or for
making the case that what distinguishes
Homo sapiens from apes is not brain size or
calculating power but their cognizance of
and place in social groups.

Yet Rosenberg does not build on this argument,
scientifically or philosophically, nor does she make any new sociological
conclusions. Rather, she
makes the case for peer pressure
though a series of case studies,
most of which have appeared in
other guises and often more analytically
presented. She looks at
how peer pressure enables successful
antismoking campaigns,
the empowerment of outcast
women in India through microfinance, the revival of megachurches, the
success of calculus clubs in universities, and,
my favorite, the power of the campaign slogan
“He’s Finished!” in the Otpor student
movement of Serbia. In her concluding
chapter, she muses on whether peer pressure
can be harnessed to counter the allure
of violent terrorism.

Each chapter is enjoyable to read as a
stand-alone description, but one is left wondering
why Rosenberg picked the subjects
she did. Ultimately, Join the Club fails to
build a compelling case. It is description
without critique or analysis. It will sit on
the same shelf as James Surowiecki’s The
Wisdom of Crowds, Malcolm Gladwell’s The
Tipping Point, or, going back three decades,
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United
States in the way it reasserts that true
power comes from within and from the support
of our peers—not from wealth, technological
supremacy, or fear. But I suspect it will
be far less thumbed through than those texts.

Yet the basic message of the book is still
true: Governments should always be a little
afraid of their people.

Peter Walker is the Irwin H. Rosenberg Professor
of Nutrition and Human Security at Tufts University
and is director of the university’s Feinstein International
Center, which develops operational and policy
responses to protect the lives of people living in crisis-affected and marginalized communities. He was the
founder of the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies’ World Disasters Report,
and he helped develop the Code of Conduct for disaster
workers and the Sphere humanitarian standards.